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BULTON’S REVENGE 

PZ 3 

.M2329 

Bui 

COPY 2 

BY 

H. C. McNEILE 


NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

. *L. 


rr 




COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
BY H. C, McNEILE 


BULTON’S REVENGE 
— B — 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


ffiR 11*24 

v£/ Cl A 7 7 713 2 






My thoughts, “with violent pace, 

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
Till that a capable and wide revenge 
Swallow them up." 

t 

T HERE w$re five of us altogether waiting in 
Mombasa for the boat. She was late—held 
up with engine trouble or something, and they 
expected her in next morning. And they weren’t cer¬ 
tain even then if she’d be able to continue her voyage 
without a further overhaul. So there was nothing for 
it but to wait with what patience one could. 

It was after dinner, I remember, and hot as blazes. 
There was Murgatroyd the coffee man, Scott of the 
police, and Jack Simpson, a gunner, all sitting in the 
lounge swearing between drinks. My recollection is 
that there wasn’t much swearing. The fourth man was 
a tall, rather immaculate-looking fellow with fair hair 
and a small moustache. His face seemed vaguely fa¬ 
miliar to me, but I couldn’t put a name to him. He 
was English obviously, but he wasn’t communicative 
about himself. His voice when he talked had rather 
a faint cultivated drawl, but he seemed quite a decent 
sort. And he was interested in things and native cus¬ 
toms. Didn’t know the country, it being his first trip 
down the East Coast, whereas most of us wished we 
didn’t know it quite so well. 

It was while Scott was holding forth about ju-ju 
that I first noticed the sixth man. He had come in 
quietly and was now glancing at some old illustrated 


4 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


papers. There was no difficulty about placing him; 
you meet the type all the world over. Hard-bitten, 
lean, fit as nails—they’ll do anything from elephant 
shooting to running a gambling hell. Some are 
straight, and some are crooked—but it’s as well not 
to trust even the straightest too far. 

Scott finished, and the fair-haired man asked him 
some question. And quite by chance I happened to be 
looking at the newcomer’s face just as he spoke. As 
I’ve said, it was an unmistakable sort of voice, and 
it appeared to give the stranger a nasty shock. The 
brand he belonged to can school their expressions bet¬ 
ter than most, but that voice must have just caught 
him napping for a moment. Remember the fair- 
haired man had his back to the stranger, so his face 
hadn’t been seen. It was just the voice and nothing 
else that did it, and it was all over so quickly that 
after a moment or two I wondered if it hadn’t been 
my imagination. With a look of surprised amaze¬ 
ment the newcomer glanced up from his paper and 
stared at the back of the fair-haired man’s head. And 
then the surprise and the amazement faded, to be re¬ 
placed by a look of such devilish rage as I have sel¬ 
dom seen on a man’s face before or since. For a 
second his teeth bared in a wolfish snarl; his fist 
clenched on the table. Then it was over, and save for 
me no one had seen it. 

Scott was holding forth again, and after a while 
the stranger got up to ring the bell. He wanted a 
drink, and he passed close to Murgatroyd’s chair. And 
as he gave the order to the waiter, Murgatroyd looked 
at him as one does if he’s not quite certain if he knows 
a man. 

“Surely,” began Murgatroyd tentatively. 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


5 


“You’re Murgatroyd, aren’t you?” said the stranger. 
“Thought I recognized you as I came in. I’m Bulton. 
Don’t you remember I came back through your place 
two years ago? You gave me some much-needed 
grub.” 

“Of course, I remember!” cried Murgatroyd heart¬ 
ily. “Come and join us.” 

Bulton nodded and drew up a chair, and the con¬ 
versation became general again. But there was one 
little thing which aroused my curiosity. There was 
no trace of recognition on the part of the fair-haired 
man as far as Bulton was concerned. Quite obviously 
he had never met the man before. Then why had that 
sudden look of diabolical rage crossed Bulton’s face? 
Or had it been a trick of the light ? I knew it hadn’t, 
and, as I say, my curiosity was aroused. 

It didn’t occur to me at the time, though it did 
later, that it was Bulton who started the topic. Jack 
Simpson and Scott were talking, it’s true, about a 
native they’d hanged in the back of beyond for a triple 
murder—but it was Bulton who introduced the wide 
subject of capital punishment generally. Was it 
sound, was it a good thing? Above all, did it suc¬ 
ceed in its object? 

The usual arguments were advanced for and against. 
It was Scott who was all for its retention, and who 
argued that the whole idea of punishment was that 
it should act as a deterrent to others, and not to be 
regarded entirely as a punishment to the culprit. But 
was death more of a deterrent than, say, imprison¬ 
ment for life? 

Yes, emphatically, argued Scott. Men who have 
received such sentences may say that it is worse than 
death—but words are easy. Give them the alterna- 


6 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


tive, and see what their answer would be. Everyone 
clings to life whetl it comes .to the point. 

But, I objected, principally for argument’s sake, 
when it comes to murder, who thinks of the future? 
In nine cases out of ten blind insensate rage has the 
would-be murderer in its grip. He is out to kill; he is 
obsessed with the idea. He never even thinks of the 
punishment that will inevitably be his. So does hang¬ 
ing act as a deterrent? And if it doesn’t, isn’t it too 
terrible a punishment? 

Scott snorted—but Scott was a policeman. And it 
was Murgatroyd who drew attention to the mental 
side of the punishment. 

“Surely the actual physical act of killing a man by 
hanging him is the least important side of the ques¬ 
tion. The awful thing to my mind would be the 
three weeks’ waiting. Knowing that every time the 
sun rose, death came one day nearer. The mental side 
of the punishment is the worse by far. And that can 
be no deterrent on others, because no one can realize 
what it means until they’re in that position them¬ 
selves.” 

Then the fair-haired man ranged himself on Scott’s 
side in no halting language. 

“Rank sentimentality,” he remarked. “There are 
crimes of violence and assault which I would punish 
by torture rather than mere hanging. Brutal, unpro¬ 
voked murders—and attempts at murder—for which 
no mercy should be shown in this world, or the next. 
Why, I know a case-” He broke off suddenly. 

“Go on,” said Bulton quietly, and he was staring 
at the fair-haired man. 

“It’s a case of the most brutal assault on a woman,” 
said the fair-haired man. “The cowardly swine tried 



BULTON’S REVENGE 


7 

to throttle her—left her for dead and bolted. In wish, 
in desire, in every way save the actual deed he did 
murder her. It was only a fluke that she didn’t die. 
And when she recovered consciousness she was so 
distraught that she couldn’t give any clear description 
of her assailant.” 

“But was there no motive?” asked Simpson. 

The fair-haired man shrugged his shoulders. 

“We could never find one. She'had on her pearls 
at the time, so it was possibly robbery-” 

“And possibly not,” said Bulton. “Motives are dif¬ 
ficult things to arrive at sometimes. Strangely enough 
I, too, know of a very similar case to the one you 
have mentioned. It was told me by a—by a man I 
met a year ago. And he was the principal actor in 
the drama. He nearly throttled a woman to death, 
but in his case one thing was a little different. In 
his case it wasn’t that she couldn’t give any clear de¬ 
scription of her assailant, but that she wouldn’t. A 
change of a solitary letter which makes a considerable 
difference. In fact it lifts the story from what you, 
sir, so aptly describe as a brutal and motiveless assault 
into the plane of psychology. Would you care to hear 
about it?” 

He glanced round the group and Scott nodded> 

“Fire right ahead,” he said. “And the calling is 
on me this time. Waiter—repeat the dose all round.” 

“I guess the name of the man who told me doesn’t 
signify,” began Bulton. “He was dying of fever 
when I ran across him, and I stayed with him till he 
pegged out. I mention that fact because he rambled 
a bit in his delirium, though he was perfectly lucid 
most of the time. But when a man rambles you either 
get gibberish, or very intimate truth. I got the lat- 



8 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


ter, and it kind of made me see the characters of his 
story in a way I wouldn’t have been able to do other¬ 
wise. He made ’em live, in a way no mere tale of 
words and deeds can ever do ; got inside ’em and took 
me with him. And, as I say, his name doesn’t sig¬ 
nify, but I’ll call him Jack for the sake of clearness. 

“Before the war he’d been training to become an 
electrical engineer. Not a particularly bright sort of 
fellow, I should imagine, but at the same time no fool. 
Rather a shy, gauche boy, and, like so many shy people, 
he had wonderful ideals. He never expressed them; 
kept them locked up in his heart. Particularly the 
ones about women. I guess you’d never believe the 
extraordinary hallucinations that boy had about the 
other sex, though wild horses wouldn’t have made him 
confess it. To him they were just something apart— 
something sacred and holy for a man to guard and 
cherish and work for. Damned funny, of course— 
and damned dangerous. For when a fellow like that 
gets his awakening, it hits him harder than you or me. 

“However, that comes a bit later. At the age of 
twenty-four this boy fell in love. He fell in love as 
a fellow of that description might be expected to fall 
in love—madly, desperately, unreasonably. He’d been 
straight himself all his life, and he set the girl up on 
a pedestal about twice the height of Nelson in Trafal¬ 
gar Square. And the higher he set her up, and the 
more desperately he became in love, the more uncon¬ 
querable did his shyness become. He’d met her first 
at a dance—by the way, we might as well call her 
Ruth—and he’d asked her for two. Incredible to 
relate she gave them to him, and because he didn’t 
dance badly, she’d managed a third. From that mo¬ 
ment it became hopeless. Ruth filled his life to the 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


9 

exclusion of everything else, and even interfered con¬ 
siderably with his work. Not that she knew it, of 
course, to her he was just one of the numerous young 
men who came and went about the house, and who 
was incidentally rather duller than most. But though, 
perhaps, he didn’t talk as much as the others, he saw 
a good deal more. And the first thing he noticed was 
the extraordinary position occupied in the household 
by Ruth’s younger sister Molly.” 

Was it my imagination, or did the fair-haired man 
give the faintest perceptible start? 

“Father, mother, Ruth—to say nothing of the serv¬ 
ants—rotated round Molly. Her slightest whim was 
their law; she was fussed over, petted and flattered 
till it almost amazed him. True, she had been delicate 
when young; true, she was one of the most lovely 
girls he had ever seen in his life—lovelier by far than 
Ruth, even he admitted that—but was that any good 
and sufficient reason for such extreme adulation? 
Especially since the net result was that it had turned 
the girl into a being so supremely selfish as to render 
her hardly human. As her absolute right she accepted 
every sacrifice they made for her; she sulked for days 
if her smallest caprices were not instantly obeyed— 
sulked, that is, provided none of the men she kept 
dangling after her were about the place; she wasn’t 
such a fool as to sulk then. The best of everything 
was hers by divine ordinance, and if other people went 
without what on earth did it matter to her? And 
amazing as it seemed the most devoted slave of all, the 
one who appeared blindest to her faults, was her sister 
Ruth. 

“It puzzled Jack considerably. To him there was 
absolutely no comparison between the two girls. Molly 


10 BULTON’S REVENGE 

was the prettier, though Ruth was lovely enough for 
any man—but there it ended. To Jack the elder sister 
was so immeasurably the better girl of the two that 
he marvelled that the men who thronged the house 
didn’t see it also. The family’s adoration he accepted 
as one of those peculiar and inexplicable things which 
just happen and must be left at that; but that outsiders 
should do the same defeated him. And the only per¬ 
son in the household who spotted his feelings was 
Molly herself. 

“She hated him for it with a bitter, deadly hatred. 
She knew that he was the only man who saw through 
her; she found, moreover, though only she knew how 
hard she tried, that he was the only man who saw her 
frequently whom she couldn’t make fall in love with 
her. She even went so far as to kiss him once at a 
dance—to kiss him on the lips unasked. And she felt 
him stiffen and recoil. She never forgave that, and 
she used to go out of her way to sneer at him and 
make him feel awkward. She left no stone unturned 
to get him to cease coming to the house, but for one 
of the few times in her life she failed. You see, he 
thought that Ruth was beginning to like him—and he 
was a sticker even if he was shy.” 

Bulton finished his drink and lit a cigarette. 

“I expect you wonder when I’m coming to the point,” 
he went on after a moment. “But I’m trying to con¬ 
dense it as much as I can. To understand that fel¬ 
low’s story, I guess you’ve got to get the mentality 
of those two girls placed in your minds. You’ve got 
to see ’em as he made me see ’em when the fever was 
on him, and he was back living it all over again. 

“Anyway I’ll get on with it. The unbelievable thing 
as far as Jack was concerned happened one night about 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


ii 


three months before he was due to pass his final ex¬ 
aminations. He didn’t know how it happened—it just 
did, as such things have happened before. He found, 
of a sudden, that Ruth was in his arms—that he was 
kissing her, that—wonder upon wonder—she was kiss¬ 
ing him. He felt the glory of her lips on his, the 
yielding of the whole of her young body against his 
own. He heard her whisper—‘My dear, I love you,’ 
and it seemed to him at that moment that life could 
hold no more. Of course, they would get married. 
Father and mother jibbed a bit at first, though since 
it wasn’t Molly it didn’t matter quite so much. Noth¬ 
ing would have induced them to allow Molly to marry 
an obscure electrical engineer; for that matter, nothing 
would have induced Molly to have contemplated such 
a ridiculous course of procedure for an instant. But 
Ruth was different. Ruth—well, after all, Ruth was 
another proposition. The poor darling couldn’t ex¬ 
pect to have very many chances, overshadowed as she 
was by Molly. Only one thing did her father insist 
on. Jack must go clear away, free from all distrac¬ 
tion, until he had passed his final exams. It was only 
three months, and Jack, who was no fool as I have 
said, agreed with the wisdom of the course. So he 
went away and he worked as he’d never worked be¬ 
fore. He buried himself in the country, and he slaved 
for fifteen hours a day. By a supreme effort of will 
he banished all thoughts of the girl from his mind— 
at least almost all thoughts. Just occasionally he’d sit 
and dream of the years to come—the wonderful, won¬ 
derful years. And then he’d go back to volts and am¬ 
peres and things and cover more paper with uninter¬ 
esting figures. He passed all right—passed with flying 
colours, and then he went to see Ruth.” 


12 BULTON’S REVENGE 

Bulton paused, and there was a strange look in his 
eyes. 

“It was her father who told him what had happened 
—told this idealistic boy the incredible thing. And he 
was a stern man, the father, a bit of a Puritan for all 
his stupidity over Molly. 

“ ‘I didn’t tell you before your exam/ he said to 
Jack. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair to put you off. But 
Ruth is no longer a daughter of mine. I have dis¬ 
owned her.’ 

“Jack sat there in the study, and he was swallow¬ 
ing hard. 

“ ‘What do you mean ?’ he stammered at length. 

“And then it came out. Of all people in the world 
a roller-skating rink instructor! At least she might 
have chosen a gentleman. Jack knew the fellow; had 
seen him in a red uniform giving lessons once or twice 
when he had skated there. Good-looking in a flashy 
way. 

“ ‘But when were they married ?’ he blurted out. 

“And the elder man’s voice was terrible as he an¬ 
swered : 

“ ‘They are not married,’ was all he said.” 

Once again Bulton paused, and I glanced at the fair¬ 
haired man. And he was staring at Bulton with a 
sort of savage intensity. 

“It mightn’t have hit some fellows quite so hard,” 
went on Bulton after a while. “But you’ve got to 
remember what manner of boy Jack was. When he 
lived it over again in his delirium, when his mind was 
back in the days that followed, I got to see into his 
soul. It killed him mentally and morally as surely as 
a revolver bullet can kill physically. From being an 
idealistic boy, he turned into a bitter man, cursing 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


13 

women and all their ways. He felt that he’d staked 
his all and lost, and deliberately he set out to get his 
own back on the whole sex. Not pretty, I grant you 
—but when you start monkeying with a man’s soul 
something’s going to happen. He had made just one 
enquiry to substantiate her father’s statement and that 
was to Molly. And Molly, looking very sweet and 
lovely, had given a pathetic little smile and nodded. 

“ ‘Poor dear Jack,’ she had whispered in a choking 
whisper. ‘Poor dear boy.’ 

“That had settled it; there was no more to be said. 
He chucked everything, and went abroad. And for 
five years he lived a life of which the less said the 
better. But in one way it had its effect; up to a point 
he forgot. Not quite, mark you—but up to a point. 
And then came the war. 

“Now I’m not going to weary you with what he did 
during that performance, since he did no more and no 
less than thousands of others. But there came the 
moment when he stopped one in the shoulder, and so 
the R.A.M.C. took him into their coils and finally 
deposited him in a base hospital near Etaples. And 
there on the first night he saw her; saw the woman 
he hadn’t seen for nine years. For a while he thought 
it was a fever dream. She had just come on duty, and 
with a shaded lamp in her hand she was walking slowly 
between the two ranks of muttering and restless men. 
And at the foot of his bed she paused and their eyes 
met. He knew then that it was no dream but reality. 

“‘Jack!’ he heard her whisper, and she came and 
laid her hand on his forehead—a hand that was trem¬ 
bling. And with the concentrated bitterness of nine 
years’ hell in his mind, he cursed her savagely and 
horribly. He said dreadful things to her—wicked, in- 


14 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


excusable things, and she answered never a word. She 
just stood there beside his bed looking at him, and in 
her eyes there was no reproach. Just divine pity and 
love and a wonderful tenderness. And he, miserable 
fool that he was, could only see a rink instructor in a 
red uniform.” 

The sweat was standing out on Bulton’s forehead, 
and he drained his whiskey at a gulp. 

“They came over that night—the Bodies. You re¬ 
member, of course, the big Etaples raid when they got 
the hospitals. They got the one Jack was in, and when 
the mess had been cleared away he scrambled madly out 
of bed and through folds of flapping canvas with sick 
fear in his heart. For the bomb had burst in her end 
of the marquee, and everything—rink instructor in¬ 
cluded—was forgotten. He was a boy again, and she 
was the girl of his dreams. And, thank God! he got 
to her before she died. 

“At a glance he saw it was hopeless, but she held 
out her arms to him. And with a great cry he caught 
her to his heart. 

“ ‘Forgive me, my dear,’ he sobbed. ‘Forgive those 
awful things I said. Who am I to judge ?’ 

“ ‘Forgive me, Jack/ she said gravely. ‘I realize 
now, I have realized for many years, that I had no 
right to sacrifice you/ 

“He looked at her wonderingly. 

“ ‘What do you mean, Ruth ?’ 

“ ‘Dear lad/ she said, and her voice was growing 
weaker, ‘you don’t really think I did it, do you? I 
hoped you’d come and let me explain. But you didn’t 
and I couldn’t find where you’d gone.’ 

“I think his heart was beating in great sickening 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


i5 

thumps just then. I think he stared at her as a man 
bereft of his senses. 

“ ‘What are you saying?’ he muttered. ‘My darling 
—speak to me!’ 

“But the end was very near, and with a sudden pas¬ 
sionate madness he strained her to him. 

“ ‘Stay with me, darling!’ he almost shouted, but 
with a pitiful little smile she shook her head. And with 
one last supreme effort she raised herself and kissed 
him on the lips. Then she died. 

“They found him wandering about the sand dunes 
the next morning, partially demented. They thought 
it was shell shock from the effects of the bomb, and 
they sent him home. I don’t really wonder at their 
diagnosis, because he was obsessed with one idea. And 
apparently, he often talked aloud about it in his sleep. 
It was such a strange idea that I’m not surprised they 
kept him on for far longer than necessary in a charm¬ 
ing country house, devoted to nerve cases. He wanted 
to find a rink instructor in a red uniform—that was 
all. But quite enough, in all conscience, for grave men 
who talked learnedly about mental aberrations and 
nerve centres and other dull things. 

“It was just about armistice time that they let him 
go, and in due course he was demobilized. And then, 
systematically, he started on his search. He never 
gave up hope though he pursued false clue after false 
clue. He advertised for six months continuously in 
every paper he could think of without avail. And 
finally, he ran his quarry to ground not half a mile 
from the rink where he had been instructing. He’d 
come back there after wandering round the country, 
and he was doing a clerk’s job in some garage. At 


16 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


first he was suspicious and uncommunicative—but 
finally he was persuaded to talk. And with an occa¬ 
sional smirk of self-complacency on his face he ad¬ 
mitted several things. Naturally, no gentleman speaks 
of such matters, but since it was ancient history now, 
there seemed to be no harm. Though, of course, it 
must go no further. He remembered the girl well— 
a nice little soul; very pretty. Her people left the 
place, he believed, when she married. But really there 
had been so many in those days. 

“ ‘And her name?’ said Jack in a quiet voice. 

“ ‘Well, I always used to call her Molly/ answered 
the rink instructor, twirling his moustache. 

“She had a sister, I believe/ went on Jack. 

“ ‘Yes—an elder sister. But no go in her—you 
can take it from me. That was where the joke lay— 
Molly using her cloak whenever she came to me/ ” 

“ 'Thank you/ said Jack heavily, rising to go. 

“ ‘Don’t mention it,’ remarked the other. ‘Those 
were the days, those were. Nothing doing in this line, 
believe you me. Will you come and have a tiddley ?’ 

“No—he would not have a tiddley. Nor would he 
take that smirking little swine and batter in his head 
as he had once battered in a German’s during a trench 
raid. After all, he was not the principal culprit. That 
honour lay elsewhere. 

“He thought things over quietly and dispassionately 
—did Jack. There was no particular hurry—now. At 
times it seemed almost incredible that such a sacrifice 
could have been accepted even by a girl like Molly. 
It was almost too amazing to be conceivable, even tak¬ 
ing into consideration the unique position she had oc¬ 
cupied in her family. Of course there were still de¬ 
tails to fill in, small points which were obscure. It was 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


17 


just within the bounds of possibility that there might 
be something he didn’t know which would palliate this 
monstrous thing. So he determined to make quite 
sure; he determined to give her every chance. He went 
to see her at the palatial country house where she now 
lived. By the way, did I mention that her husband 
was a peer of the realm—an earl, to be exact ?” 

The fair-haired man drew in his breath with a sharp 
hiss, and for the first time, think, the other men real¬ 
ized that more than just a mere story was being un¬ 
folded. I know Murgatroyd was fidgeting in his seat, 
and Scott had a worried look on his face. 

‘‘He was ushered into the great lady’s presence by 
a pompous butler, and she seemed to have a little dif¬ 
ficulty in recognizing him, though the knuckles of her 
hand on the chair gleamed white as she saw him, and 
stark fear showed for a moment in her eyes. At 
length, however, she was graciously pleased to recall 
to her aristocratic mind this obscure individual from 
the past, and all the time he just stood there staring 
at her without speaking a word. And after a while 
she began to tremble, and blotches showed on her 
cheeks through the make-up. He knew, and she knew 
that he knew. Moreover, the callow boy had gone; 
in his place stood a dangerous man. 

“ ‘Why do you look at me like that, Jack?’ she whis¬ 
pered at length. 

“ ‘Because I want to find out if there lives one re¬ 
deeming feature in your beastly little soul,’ he said 
quietly. ‘At present it doesn’t look like it, but I will 
give you every chance. Why did you let Ruth bear 
the blame for your rotten intrigue with that rink in¬ 
structor? Why did you always go to his rooms in 
her cloak ? And don’t try to lie to me.’ 


i8 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


“At first she tried to bluster, but not for long. She 
hadn’t any excuse, none, save that she was young and 
stupid. The man had fascinated her, and she had gone 
to his rooms without thinking of the consequences. 

“ ‘In Ruth’s cloak,’ put in Jack contemptuously. 

“Then she’d got engaged—a wonderful match—to 
her present husband. She’d met him while she was 
staying away at a friend’s house. But even while she 
was engaged she couldn’t give up the rink instructor; 
she still went to his rooms. And one night she was 
seen—coming away. It was to Ruth she had rushed 
—it was to Ruth that she poured out the story. And 
it was Ruth who had suggested the way out. She 
was very insistent on that point; she seemed to think 
it was some excuse. And it was helped by the fact 
that the kindly persons who carried the story to her 
father had thought it was Ruth owing to the cloak. 
Didn’t Jack understand, couldn’t he see the awful pre¬ 
dicament? Any breath of scandal and her fiance might 
break off the engagement—would break it off. And 
how could she have known that Jack would take it as 
he did? 

“‘Is that all you have to say?’ said Jack, as she 
finished. 

“ 'What are you going to do?’ she almost screamed. 

“ ‘I’m going to commit every word of it to paper, 
and send it to your husband,’ he replied. 

“And then she went mad. She implored, she en¬ 
treated, she went on her knees to him—until some¬ 
thing snapped suddenly in his brain. It seemed to him 
that this was no woman in front of him—but some¬ 
thing loathsome and unclean. All the old hatred he 
had felt for her as a boy came surging back, and with 
it the face of Ruth as she had died in his arms. And I 


BULTON’S REVENGE 


19 

think he must have had his hands on her throat for a 
minute before he realized the fact.” 

With great deliberation Bulton lit a cigarette, and his 
glance never wavered from the fair-haired man’s face. 

“He didn’t quite throttle her; though as you said, 
sir, like the man in your case, in every way save the 
actual deed he did. They found her just breathing 
half-an-hour later, and she was unable to give any de¬ 
scription of the man who had done it. Couldn’t or 
wouldn’t? I leave you to judge. And is that one of 
the crimes of violence you would punish by torture 
rather than by mere hanging?” 

For a moment or two there was dead silence; there 
didn’t seem to be anything much to say. For the is¬ 
sue had narrowed down to Bulton and the fair-haired 
man; we were out of the picture. And it was Scott’s 
quick gasp that made me look up. 

The fair-haired man was staring over Bulton’s head 
at a woman who was approaching. She was tall and 
very beautiful—but her face had no soul in it. It was 
devoid of expression, like the face of a lovely doll. 

“Have you heard anything more about the boat, 
Henry ?’ she said languidly, and at the sound of her 
voice Bulton turned slowly in his chair and looked at 
her. 

And then we knew. Not necessary to watch the 
sudden ashen cheeks; not necessary to hear the one 
choked-out word ‘Jack!’; not necessary even to see three 
ugly red scars on the white neck—we knew without 
that. And like a drunken man Henry, Earl of Pyr- 
ford, lurched across the room, and went out through 
the open windows into the African night. 


THE END 


LIBRARY of congress 


0 002 176 110 2 
















